Else

Optionally, an if statement may include an else immediately after its body. The else is followed by its own body, which the program will execute if the if's condition is false or skip if the if's condition is true. The pattern looks like this. Note that, like if (condition) {, else { should never include a semicolon.

An if with no else can either execute or skip a block of code. An if with an else will always execute either the if block or the else block. If you want your program to execute additional code some of the time, then you should probably use an if on its own. If you have two different blocks of code and always want one or the other to execute, then an if followed by an else is appropriate.

Finally, note that an else never has a condition. It will only execute when the if's condition is false, so a condition is not necessary.